No, that’s a stupid, weak thought, and I’m the opposite of those things. Lyro has taught me that. When he calls me stupid and weak, I know what he really means. He means I give to other people without demanding things in return. He means I love people even when they hate me a little bit. It looks soft and illogical from the outside, but that’s because I operate by my own sense of right and wrong instead of being shaped by other people’s values.
She can take care of herself.No one has ever understood that. No one believed I could. Ada shaped her whole life around the idea that I couldn’t. For a long time, I didn’t believe I could, either.
Harl swings his heavy head in disagreement. “If they think you’re a traitor, they’re wrong. You’re a victim, Lena. You’re here against your will. I hadn’t acknowledged it even to myself until your mate showed me the truth.”
“He showed me, too, unfortunately.” I shoot him a bitter smile. I’m not sorry to see the situation clearly, but I’m still a little sad about it. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are. Or I hope we can be. I should have been open with you from the beginning. My judgment was clouded by my desperation to make the Hatching happen. I’m sorry,” he rumbles, grabbing my hand in his huge, baseball-mitt-sized one. “I know it’s a poor excuse. I hope you can forgive me one day. Even if we can’t be friends, we are family. You are my young’s song-mother, and I will do whatever I can for you, always.”
I squeeze his leathery fingers, heart full and heavy at the same time, before dropping them. I don’t blame him for what he’s done. I blame myself for forgetting that he was one of my original abductors. I told myself he was different because he was nice to me, but niceness is a façade.
Harl might not have had the mercenary intent of his employers, but he knew from the beginning that we could never be true friends. He knew that it was wrong how they used us sexually without telling us that’s what it was. He knew, and he did it anyway. He’s sorry now that he hurt me, but he still believes it was worth it.
Maybe he’s right. I certainly don’t regret singing to my babies and helping them grow. But our friendship is over.
His scan of my scrapes and bruises finds nothing seriously wrong, and Rose catches me on my way out.
“How are you doing?” she asks anxiously. Her face looks worn out and pale, and I can’t tell if it’s her Irran pigment showing her shame or if she’s just regular-human tired and sad.
“Been better,” I admit, understatement of the year. “I’ll be at the hatchery in the morning, though, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Of course not!” she says quickly, and then, seeming to realize how unbelievable that is given what just happened in the hangar, amends, “That’s not all, anyway. I just had to make sure you weren’t....” She trails off, hand pressed to her chest, overcome momentarily with emotion.
She drags in a deep breath, and she looks so broken that I can’t help the surge of sympathy that makes me reach out in an impulsive hug. She wraps her arms around me. “I would never make you...I would never keep ...I would neverforce...” Her voice cracks with emotion. “You know my history. I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know.”
Even though they happened fifty years ago, her years of captivity are obviously still incredibly painful to her. I know she would never perpetrate that on someone else. Not on purpose. She never held me against my will. Never thought of me as anything but an eager volunteer. And she’s not wrong. I thought I was, too.
“This is all my fault,” she sobs into the shoulder of my cloak. “I sent them to get you. Theysavedme, Lena. I thought they were different.”
“You thought you were sending us heroes.”
She heaves a shuddering sob. “Yes.”
I hold her, patting her back until she gets her breath under control. “You weren’t wrong. History would have remembered them that way if they hadn’t gotten greedy and tried to sell us. I think that’s how it always is. Look at any war on Earth. One people’s heroes are another people’s villains.”
“Maybe so,” she says, letting me go to wipe her eyes with the edge of her patched sleeve. “That doesn’t make me feel better, though. How are you so calm about it?”
A lifetime of letting bad things happen has left me exhausted. I shrug. “I can’t change the past. I just have to make it worth it. That’s why I’ll be there to sing in the morning.” My tadpoles are worth just about anything.
“Come by for firstmeal?” she asks hopefully. Her bright expression fades when I shake my head. “Okay. I understand. My door is always open, though.”
My room is so still and empty without Elvis in his enclosure and an arrogant alien taking up two-thirds of the bed. Plus, Lyro flew off with all the furs, including the one I borrowed from Rose, so the sleeping platform is bare. Even though I’m not locked inside, I’ve never felt more captive than in this lonely room.
I make a pillow from the extra svelis he gave me and wrap up in his cloak to sleep, not sorry at all to be surrounded by his scent. He’ll come back for me.
I hope.
In the meantime, I can take care of myself.
Lyro
WHILE MY BIRD’S AUTOPILOTfollows the homing beacon’s signal, I try not to think about Lena alone on R’Hiza, potentially carrying my greenling while surrounded by Frathik fur-fuckers. She will survive, and I will destroy, and then we’ll make something new on the other side.
I shouldn’t have cleaned the furs. I miss her scent.
Instead of wallowing in my feelings, I sit on the floor of the ship with Elvis perched on my shoulder, using the welding pen to fashion him a flower-shaped feeder out of a scrap piece of epylium foil.
